The Cannibal King and the Onion Knight
by lannerz
Summary: When Davos Seaworth finally finds Rickon Stark on Skagos, he realizes that he is in over his head. The young, true Lord of Winterfell is wild and untamed and desperate for the blood of those who have wronged him. But Davos will not fail his mission.


**Author's Notes:** This was a sort of random fanfic that I randomly did. A friend on tumblr made a comment that she wanted a chapter in TWOW to be Davos and cannibal Rickon to ride unicorns. Since I adore this person, I decided to write a silly little ficlet as a gift. Instead, it turned into a dramatic, surreal tragedy. Also, Rickon deserves more love. People forget the poor boy, I haven't! When Davos finds him, it's going to be awesome.

**Disclaimer:** Do I look like GRRM? I don't think so. He owns these characters. If I did, Rickon would already be king.

_The Cannibal King and the Onion Knight_

It took Davos longer to get to Skagos than expected, at least a month of traveling. He was forced to resort to his old ways of getting by and it came to him slower than he anticipated. He found them six months after he'd come to Skagos. He had been wary about Skagos after first stepping on the island. Mental images of being attacked by natives and being eaten alive had been strong on his boat ride. However, he'd been startled to realize he had no idea what Skagos natives looked like and had pictured them as paler versions of the Dothraki. It had been a ridiculously incorrect assumption, but he'd never met or talked with anyone that had truly been on the island.

The inhabitants of the island had been chilly to him, but they hadn't eaten him at least. Most of the time, when he'd inquired after the youngest Stark, the people had given him strange looks, shaken their heads, and turned him away. A few of them had heard whispers of him though. _"The Cannibal King,"_ they called him in the dark of night, as if they were afraid he might hear them and hunt them down. It still struck Davos as ironic and amusing that the people everyone thought were cannibals were scared of a seven year-old boy rumored to be a cannibal.

The fourth night he was with Osha and Rickon, Davos decided to explain fully why he was here. Rickon needed to go back to Westeros. If Davos could bring the only remaining Stark boy back to the North, then Wyman Manderly would proclaim for Stannis Baratheon, and those were ships that Stannis very much needed. Most of the North might rally behind Manderly and therefore Stannis, but mostly, he knew that they would flock to Rickon. Davos had explained this slowly, trying to get the boy and the woman to understand, but he could tell that Rickon was even more hesitant than Osha. This had become his home. He was safe here, where he was able to play with Shaggydog and unicorns and all sorts of creatures that Davos had never seen. Osha spoke of a baby kraken hidden in a lake deep in the island that Rickon had even befriended, though Davos didn't think it true.

Still, this was a hard thing to ask of a child, especially one that had been living in relative peace and happiness for nearly four years after the entire loss of his family. Osha had explained that they were cut off from the rest of the world for the most part, but she'd gleamed news of Westeros throughout the years in the fishing villages. Rickon knew that his brother Robb and mother were dead, though he never spoke of it. He also knew that his big sister Sansa had vanished and that his bastard brother Jon had become Lord Commander of the Wall.

There was one thing he didn't know apparently. "Your sister Arya is being married to Ramsay Bolton, so that the Bolton claim to the North can be made stronger. That was when I was still in Westeros, so it's probably already happened."

"What!" Rickon bared his teeth like a wild beast and growled. Never in Davos' life had he ever seen a child look so ferocious. He truly was a wild one. Shaggydog paced the camp, snarling and snapping his jaws at the air, as if he could eat the words away and make them untrue for Rickon's sake. "That's the Bastard of Bolton! He's who really burned Winterfell, not Theon. We were hiding when it happened, in the crypts, but I know he did it. He can't have Winterfell _or_ Arya!" He bit his lip, looking suddenly unsure, and furrowed his brow. "But Arya is _dead_. How can she marry Ramsay Snow?"

"I do not know, my young lord."

Rickon looked strangely placid when Davos called him that. As the third son, he had probably never once entertained the idea of being the Lord of Winterfell. When Davos had asked him about Bran, he'd simply walked away and Osha had told him that they'd gone their separate ways ages ago in Winterfell so that the little princes could be safer. Ramsay was going around saying that he was the Lord of Winterfell due to his marriage to Arya, but if Rickon was alive, it would refute his claim.

Osha gave Davos a sideways look and then bent down to Rickon's level. "Do you want to go back to Winterfell?"

There was a dark look on Rickon's face. It looked out of place on a seven year-old's face. It was a face that told of centuries of untold pain and anger. "I want that Bastard's _blood_."

"So eager for revenge, my little prince?"

"Shaggydog will eat him alive!" Rickon proclaimed, stomping his feet angrily. But when Davos gave the child a closer look, he saw the hot tears in the boy's blue eyes. The direwolf started to become more agitated, growling louder and hanging in the shadows where his green eyes glowed fiery hot and vicious. "Shaggydog will tear his throat out! He will! If I tell him to, he will. For Arya and for Winterfell!"

After that, the boy stormed off. He found a unicorn that he'd named Blizzard, pulled himself on top with the help of Shaggydog, and galloped away into the forest. Every time he grew restless and angry, he did this. Osha noted that it happened more often now that Davos was with them.

"He's grown so wild," Davos muttered to himself that night, staring into the fire as the child slept soundly a few feet away. "I worry that the lords in the North won't accept him."

"Aye," Osha replied as she peeled a strange fruit, "but the North is a wild place, Lord Onion Knight." Davos cursed in his mind. He never should have said that out loud, but the moment he'd told Rickon his nickname, Rickon had known who he was immediately. He'd figured a child at Rickon's age would remember stories of war, especially ones that involved silly names. But it was Osha that called him 'Lord Onion Knight' all the time now. "And 'sides, he's lost his family. It's only natural for him to be wild. Starks have never been tame. The North, as you call it, may be South for me and mine, but this boy is strong enough for both. He has to be wild to survive."

It took another week for Rickon to make his decision. He came to Davos one night, Shaggydog trailing behind him like a menacing dark shadow. It reminded Davos queerly of the shadow that he'd seen all those years ago below in Storm's End, but he did not want to think of that. "I want to go home." This was not the voice of a cannibal king, but that of a child. The way the firelight played on his face though made him look gruesome, like he'd eaten someone's heart out of their chest. He frowned. "Winterfell doesn't belong to the Bastard. It's mine and my family's. It's my home. And Arya is _my_ sister, not his wife."

"This will be not easy," Davos told him. "It will take time to get there and even then, more time for everyone to hear that you are alive and your claim for Winterfell, my prince."

"Robb's dead." It was the first time Davos had heard Rickon mention his older brother. The boy glared into the fire. "I'm not a prince, not anymore."

_No,_ Davos thought, watching as Shaggydog nudged his bloody snout against Rickon's head, _you are the Cannibal King._

"The Boltons will resist," Davos added. "They will call you a fraud and demand your skin."

"He can try. Shaggydog and I will eat his heart right out of him," Rickon snapped, and Shaggydog growled in agreement. The direwolf was bigger than Rickon and could even be ridden by the boy. Davos imagined that it took everything in the beast not to kill unicorns as Rickon had commanded.

Another week and a plan was made, but it was flimsy at best. Davos had been on Skagos for quite some time, but he'd never really thought about what exactly would happen if he found Rickon Stark. The plan had been just to get to Skagos, survive cannibalism, find Rickon (if he hadn't been eaten alive), go back to Westeros, present him to Lord Manderly, and then have Manderly proclaim fealty to Stannis Baratheon. It turned out though that it wasn't nearly as simple or neat as that.

Rickon was seven years-old and willful. He'd grown attached to Skagos, its land, and some of its people. Throughout his time with the two, though they lived alone, he saw that they never wanted for food. One morning, he'd gotten up earlier than expected, only to stumble across a young girl placing food on a blanket they'd left sitting out. Before he'd been able to say anything, the girl had run off. Osha explained that some of the people gave them food, much like a sacrifice, to appease the Cannibal King. Rickon hadn't thought much of it, but if he was happy, then Shaggydog was less prone to attacking. He was a sweet boy when he wasn't angry, but when his fury was provoked, it could be a terrible thing. Apparently, a month into their stay here, a man had tried to rape Osha. In response, Rickon had bit him on the leg, stopping the man, and before the man could respond, Shaggydog had leapt onto him and torn his face off. Whispers about Rickon warging into his wolf's clothes to do his will spread like wildfire across the land; and people had come to revere, love, and fear him.

"He won't be a good, little lord," Osha explained as they saddled a unicorn, "but he'll be the lord those Southerners will need."

She still had the habit of calling the North the South, since she was from beyond the Wall. It had been confusing at first, but Davos had grown used to it.

Davos had travelled in many different ways. He had lived many years, most of them spent on the sea, but he'd learned to ride a horse well enough as well. After being injured, he'd been forced to sit in a cart during travels. That had been the most degrading. He'd sailed on so many different types of boats, dingies, and the like that he'd nearly forgotten them all. One time, he'd been forced to paddle two miles on a wooden board until a boat had found him. That had been when he was young and foolish and just started out smuggling. He'd been a terrible smuggler at fifteen, but smart enough to jump hard enough on the plank that he'd been forced to walk out on after being caught stealing.

But Lord Davos Seaworth had never expected to ever travel by riding on a unicorn.

Rickon Stark, however, had no hesitations when it came to riding unicorns. Davos was sure the boy had ridden a horse before, at least in another life in Winterfell, but he was so young that Davos also wondered if Rickon was capable of remembering riding anything but a unicorn. Osha had said that the boy had become attached to the creatures almost immediately, like he did many other animals.

"Sometimes, I feel he's more a wildling than me," she sighed while watching Rickon ahead run in circles on Blizzard with Shaggydog chasing after them playfully.

The ride was long and hard. Davos felt absurd riding a unicorn, even more so when he watched how at ease the boy was. He'd fought with Osha about taking the unicorns with them, but she'd told him they couldn't. Davos had agreed. Enough heads would be turned when Rickon's arrival was announced; they didn't need to add magical unicorns to the mix. Already Davos felt as if he'd been transplanted into another world; he felt as if he'd died all those days ago and entered this strange life a man grown old.

There were nights when they'd make camp and he would watch the boy curled up in the warmth of his direwolf's fur. The child did not seem real, sometimes not even human, but then he would open his eyes and look at the sky. Rickon's quiet moments concerned Davos the most. He could see in those boy's eyes that he was still lost. Davos himself had never truly known his parents, but he knew what the loss of his loved ones felt like. He could only imagine out of his place in the world that Rickon felt.

One night, while eating, Rickon abruptly asked, "Do you have any children, Lord Seaworth."

"I do, my lord," Davos responded. "I have three young boys, one of them a squire for King Stannis." He paused, gazing into the flames of their fire. When he looked back at Rickon and Shaggydog, he could see the green wildfire glowing in the direwolves' eyes and the screams of the men burning around him at the Battle of Blackwater Bay. "I had four others, older ones, strong ones, but they were lost in King's Landing during a battle."

Rickon frowned deeply. "I'll kill the men who killed your sons, too."

Davos glanced at the child. "Are you going to kill everyone, my lord?"

"I'll kill them all, if I have to, Shaggydog and I will," Rickon grumbled, leaning back into his direwolf. "Shaggydog will eat anyone who deserves it, and I'll taste their blood through him – the Boltons and the Lannisters and the Freys." He wiped at his face. Davos thought there might've been tears, but he couldn't see in this light. "I thought they were my friends – Little and Big Walder Frey – I thought they were, but…" Shaggydog snorted in his sleep. "But they weren't."

"We always think our friends are our friends, my little lord," Osha sighed tiredly, "until they stab us in the back and they aren't." She threw the blanket at him. "We need to get some sleep. Tomorrow, we'll be in town, and we need a ship."

A ship, yes, Davos could do that. Though he only had a bit of money left, he would be able to get them a ship. Osha had offered to sleep with a captain or two, but Davos would have none of that. If the North and Skagos were Rickon's worlds and beyond the Wall was Osha's, then the sea and a boat were Davos'. A ship he could do. He gazed back at the majestic unicorns sleeping at the edge of their camp. None of them had been tethered to a tree like one might a horse, but they hadn't needed to be. They all kept a close to Rickon. _One more night,_ he thought, but as the fire began to die and sleep fell upon him, Davos realized that he'd started this mission almost a year ago.

Who knew what lied in Westeros and the North for him now? The Cannibal King would be returned to Winterfell. Whatever it was waiting for him in Westeros, Davos was sure it something more realistic and concrete than unicorns and actual cannibals.


End file.
